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Boost to Chances of Life on Europa?
Gavinsblog writes "New Scientist is reporting that scientists have found that electricity
is produced when aluminium bullets are fired into a block of ice. This raises
the chances of finding life on Europa, as eletrical shocks of this kind could
cause complex molecules to form. An electrifying discovery? :-)"
I read the title really fast and thought it said: "Boost to Chances of Life in Europe?"
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
An electrifying discovery?
I'm shocked that someone would say that.
To create life is electricity and complex molecules, that's why we do it here all the time. That's why we've figured out how to create life out of nothing but molecular sludge and electricity...
They should know what those yellow brown stains on the ice are... someone had a super biggulp on the way to europa and couldn't hold it!
...attempt no drive-bys there.
Yeah you know with all of those aluminum bullets shooting at that stupid moon over the last few billion years, it's bound to have created something!!!!!
~GoRK
who DOESN'T want to live next to a salt volcano!
this is not a sig.
To start shooting bullets at something just because it might be inhabitted.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This result is certainly interesting, but I don't think it really pushes the case of organics on Europa much farther than it already was. I'm a little skeptical that electric sparks in an ice matrix will do a lot to generate organic molecules, for starters. (With compounds in the ice, there is very limited mobility, so that chemical reactions just don't occur very often. My guess is that you can spark it all you like, but in most case, nothing will happen.) Research needs to be done on that problem before they have much of a case.
Even then, this is hardly ground-breaking. Electric sparks are not the only way to generate organics. Urey and Miller also showed that UV light can do the same thing. All you really need is a high-energy source to break up some bounds and allow new ones to form. Heck, even the particle radition in Jupiter's magnetosphere can probably do some of that. The UV flux is down by a factor of 27 from that at Earth (top of the atmosphere, now at the surface where ozone and other molecules have attenuated it), but I'd bet you can provide more activation energy that way than with little electric shocks from impacts.
That said, it's a damn cool result without all the "Life on Europa" hype.
Evidence for the presence of the molecular building blocks for life comes from the yellow-brown stains seen on the ice by the Galileo probe.
Newer images reveal evidence that these stains may have been left after a recent pass of Pluto.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Just because during a reenactment of the documentary film, "Ice Lord Fists: Attack Hunter Zero" your buddy in the ice suit got his braces stuck does not mean you can call it research into meteor impacts.
Even if Ice Lord Fist came from space.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Yes, there has been life here in Europa for quite some time. Intelligent life too, contrary to some other continents. ^^
Miller and Urey's experiment is highly misrepresented in the textbooks of today. Among other things, it was based on a completely bogus set of assumptions. Such as the atmosphere being C02, CH4, H20, NH3 with no free 02. At our distance from the sun, this atmosphere is absurd. Why? Because the hard UV that would be coming in without any ozone layer (no O2 in the atmosphere, no ozone layer) would dissociate the NH3 rapidly into N2 and H2, as it would CH4 into more complex oils. But if there were 02 in the atmosphere, their experiment would fail miserably as the oxygenation would be the dominant reaction. All of which makes their experimental conditions irrelevant.
Additionally, they only made a tiny fraction of the amino acids necessary for life. Those that were made were racemic, while life is universally homochiral in proteins (the tiny number of exceptions are in things like bacterial cell walls).
And the sludge they did produce was mostly tar (a term used by organic chemists to mean the sludge left behind when you can't extract anything useful from it). In fact it was 85% tar, 13.0% carboxylic acids (many of which would destroy life before it could get started), 1.05% glycine (the simplest amino acid) and 0.85% alanine (the second simplest amino acid). There were also trace amounts of glutamic, aspartic, valine, leucine, serine, proline, and treonine.
If you want to understand the problems with the chemistry of the origin of life, there's a good paper that's pretty readable for those with a bit of exposure to chemistry.
Got Wisdom?
Taking a fairly uninteresting story and finding a way to spin it so that it seems related to a hot topic like SETI.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Yes, those yellow-brown stains on the ice -- they've found the Chicago Blackhawks' secret training facility.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
some naturally occuring aluminum projectile weapons on europa and *BANG* life :)
An electrifying discovery?
I bet you lay awake all night thinking of that punchline before you submitted this story, didn't you?
There's a 100% chance of microbial life on Uranus. Why they haven't looked there leaves me baffled.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Shooting aluminum bullets at ice makes electricity, which could be a catalyst for life or something, and they've found evidence of life on Europa ...
... so somebody's been shooting alluminum bullets at europa ... <panic>OH MY GOSH! The aliens have been using europa for target practice for when they invade earth! They're gonna attack us with aluminum bullets!
... I've stocked up on duct tape and plastic sheeting, so I'm safe. :-)
hmmm
AAAAAHHH!!!!</panic>
It's okay, though
Now not only are /. articles full of mistakes, the articles are too! Is Callista the feminine version of Callisto? Talk about a frigid moon.
"A lander may be sent to the surface of the Europa to look for organic matter." "The Europa" is right out.
Think an editor or stopped before he or she got to the end?
120 chars of filth!
.. Europe is written as "Eurooppa" :)
Europe is written as Europa!
I think you meant to say "statistically", and no, they don't. The toxic soup kills them, no matter how they interact. That's why it's called "toxic".
Yes, as a matter of fact, I _am_ the "My" in "My Computer"
whoawhoawhoawhoa, slow down, egghead!
BOOBS
Anyone have a clear idea why Aluminum blocks would make a good simulation of an asteroid? Naively, I would expect asteroids to be a more loosely packed amalgam of low Z elements - and thus would deliver a smaller shock and thus a smaller electrical current.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Ok everyone, go look up the anthropomorphic principle, and repeat after me;
Firing bullets into ice does not increase the chances of finding life on Europa.
In fact, the only thing that increases the possibility of life being found anywhere, is finding life somewhere. It doesn't matter how many stars there are, or planets, or planets with water. One data point (Earth), that we are the product of, does not count.. Untill we can look at X number of planets / Y number with life, we know zero about the chances of finding life.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Wow. I can imagine Charlton Heston using this one at his next speech. "And here, ladies and gentlemen, my Glock 19 is helping in the creation of life as I unload my magazine into this block of party ice. It's a proven scientific fact." But seriously now, if the concensus is that the primordial soup was created by an electrical charge, is it possible that a meteroid bombardment on Earth's ice caps caused the initial formation of life on earth? Makes more sense than the "Organic material hitch-hiking on meteorites" theory...